“One of the worst things [Trump] said was about a woman in a beauty contest,” Clinton said on the debate stage. “He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name: Her name is Alicia Machado … She has become a U.S. citizen, and you can bet she’s going to vote this November.”

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That moment kicked off a flurry of positive press for Machado orchestrated by the Clinton campaign – first with the release of a video interview with Machado, and then with a coordinated phone call with Machado and journalists. It also prompted a proper freak-out from both Cosmopolitan writer Prachi Gupta and Guardian U.S. columnist Lucia Graves, who were both working on profiles of Machado that they had planned to run later in the week.

Both publications pushed out their profiles the following day, prompting some to suggest that the timing was more than just good fortune. But contrary to some reports that the interviews were “embargoed for post-debate release,” neither Gupta nor Graves had an agreement with Machado or the Clinton campaign to release their profiles at a certain time, they told POLITICO. In fact, they said, they had no idea their profiles would suddenly have the news peg that it did.

“We were all very surprised to hear Clinton name-drop Alicia during the debate,” Gupta told POLITICO. “As soon as that moment happened, our team hustled to get the story up sooner than we had planned … My editors and I knew we had to get this out the door sooner.”

Graves told POLITICO she stayed up all night to finish her profile, which as of Monday night had only been a jumble of notes and quotations.

Graves, who has written a series of profiles about Trump’s treatment of women, said she knew about the Cosmopolitan profile that was in the works, and that she was operating with the understanding that she would publish only after Cosmopolitan published its exclusive with Machado, slated to go up on Wednesday. Cosmopolitan also told POLITICO that their initial publication date was supposed to be Wednesday.

“The debate changed everything,” Graves told POLITICO. “The news desk and features editors, they were like, ‘sorry, but we can’t wait for Cosmo anymore. Hillary Clinton just blew this embargo.’”

“We both got scooped by Hillary Clinton,” she added.

Both Gupta and Graves had sought out interviews with Machado after they saw earlier coverage of Machado’s story. Graves had been trying to secure an interview with the former Miss Universe since The New York Times’s Michael Barbaro mentioned her briefly at the end of a story about Trump’s behavior toward women in May. Gupta’s interest was piqued, she said, after seeing Machado sit down for an interview with “Inside Edition,” also from May.

Both reporters were both able to secure interviews with Machado last week after being in touch with Machado’s publicist for months.

Graves said that during her interview on Friday, she asked Machado about her involvement with Clinton’s campaign. There was no hint that something like this was being planned.

“Clearly this was something that they had been sitting on and waiting to pull out at the right time," Graves said. "I knew Machado was a surrogate … but I had no idea that they had this level of a package waiting to drop.”

But Gupta and Graves told POLITICO that whoever Clinton’s campaign might have been coordinating with, it wasn't them.

“Clinton’s campaign had no involvement in coordinating the interview and we did not share our plans for a profile,” Gupta said. “The next time we were in touch with Clinton’s team was on Tuesday morning when I reached out for comment.”

A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign did not respond to an emailed request for comment about their knowledge of the profiles.

In May, DNC deputy communications director Eric Walker in an email suggested pitching Machado's story to members of the Latino press with the hope that it "could blow up pretty big" (hat-tip to Sam Biddle for pointing this out to us.) Graves and Gupta are not mentioned in the email thread, which was part of a trove of hacked DNC emails released by WikiLeaks.